Someone did it. They got into that age-old argument with me, the one those of you who know me have learned not to try and argue with me. Military strength. Why in the world anyone is still trying to claim that ANYONE out there could hold their own against the United States is beyond me, the numbers are as plain as day, and there's no disputing them. There's a damn good reason the entire world, including all the other superpowers, recognize and acknowledge that the U.S. is the most powerful military on Earth, bar none. Yet still I ceaselessly encounter these peons who think they know differently. 

And of all places, this one insisted Iran, IRAN, could fight us. It came up during speculation (I wasn't even involved in the conversation before this) that if Iran keeps up it's bullshit, America might get into it with them too (unlikely, with Obama at the helm, but whatever). At which point someone said that would be a big mistake, because Iran is much stronger militarily than either Iraq or Al Qaeda or the Taliban. 

Now, those of you who know me know that that was the moment I entered the conversation, with a thunderous facepalm. I mean, really? Iran? Whatever happened to the guys who tried to tell me China could take us on? Yeah I embarassed them just as bad, but at least they picked a real heavyweight. Iran's military is barely even a blip on the fucking global radar. 

He was pointing to some fuckin parades and training videos and shit he saw on the military channel, that apparently led him to conclude that Iran has a "badass" military. Funny, I remember Saddam making similar claims based on similar demonstrations, saying that his military could crush us. And boy oh boy, it took us a whole two weeks to go from crossing his borders to capturing his capital city. Two fucking weeks to take control of the entire country. By the by, now seems like a good time to point out that Iran is about the size of Texas. Yeah.

I could go into the nitty gritty numbers, but really, with Iran it's such a tremendous power gap that it's too laughable to bother. I'll just point out the one big one: The U.S. defense budget is over half a trillion dollars a year. That's right, the U.S. spends more than 500 billion dollars annually, equipping and training and improving it's military. The key thing to point out here is that if you were to take the defense budgets of EVERY OTHER NATION ON EARTH, BIG AND SMALL (including the ~6 billion Iran spends) and COMBINE THEM ALL, you STILL would not add up to the amount of money we spend. As for China and the notion that they, as one of our largest financiers, could "cut us off", the fact remains that even if our defense spending came to a screeching halt and dropped to zero, it would still take China about a DECADE to catch up to us... and they're number two. They're the closest to us in military strength.

So yeah. Let's not pretend Iran is any kind of threat. They're about as dangerous as the ragtag terrorists we're fighting now, with their cheap AK's and RPG's and homemade IED's. If China and Russia teamed up on us, 2 against 1, then they could present a challenge... kinda. They'd have an unbelievable ground force (and I mean jaw-dropping), but the truth is, even their combined navy and combined air force wouldn't be as large or as advanced as our own navy and air force, and guess what? There's an ocean between us. That very impressive land force would be useless, and we'd just bomb them to kingdom come. Iran? Don't make me laugh.